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The 
Great War 

By JAMES P? WARBASSE 



Brooklyn, N. Y. 



Div. ,_, 
(Not yet Ca: 



•iby 






The Great Waf. 

By James P. WarbassEj 
Brooklyn, New York. 

The world is staggered by the spectacle of a great waf. 
Men who have no real antagomsms, but who on the contrary 
are bound by common interests, are killing one another. In 
the face of our possibilities for living as civilized beings this 
is the most unholy war the world has seen. 

The men who kill and suffer and die have no quarrel. It is 
not a war of races or even of kings. The quarrel is between 
antagonistic financial interests, seeking marts of trade. Com- 
mercial greed and the privilege of exploiting more peoples are 
the spur and the goal. Kings, ministers and soldiers are all 
victims of this evil competition. The kings and ministers are 
the agents of the powers of property, and the soldiers are the 
dupes and tools of kings and ministers. 

These agencies of capitalistic exploitation for generations 
have built armies and navies which have astonished the world 
and to do which they have denied children bread, clothes, 
shelter, and school, and plunged the great governments into 
bankruptcy from which they can not emerge. Built armies 
and navies for what? To protect the homes of the people? 
To save our wives and children from marauding invaders? 
Not at all. This bankruptcy of purse and soul has been 
invited in order that the few who own and control the land, 
the machinery of production, and the agencies of exchange 
might be protected in their privileges, expand and flourish. 

For all this brutalizing savagery, the sufferings of the 
dying and living, the destruction of homes, the retardation of 
science and art, we have to thank the powers of capitalism — 
the competitive, -profit-making system. These powers have 
been served by their three allies: race prejudice, patriotism, 
and the Christian Church. 

Race prejudice has been called upon to rally the forces 
against one another. Of all the sins the world and its relig- 
ions have fostered, this is one of the greatest. It is borne of 



Ignorance and misunderstanding of scientific facts. Failure to 
grasp the biological and ethnic principles which underlie the 
brotherhood of man, and acceptance of the falsehoods of his- 
tory and tradition, have poisoned the minds of the nations; 
and in the moment of stress this ignorance and superstition 
have lent themselves to inflame the passions, and have 
prompted men who should clasp hands as brothers to rush at 
one another's throats. 

Patriotism, the cry that the particular political machine 
represented by the government, which hides behind a flag or 
a king, must be preserved and esteemed above the interests of 
the individual and of humanity, is a fundamental causative 
factor in this war. It has fostered militarism and the worst of 
reactionary sentiments in government. The accident of geo- 
graphical boundary lines, which are the products of warfare, 
sets men, who should be friends, against one another with the 
cry of patriotism. Ignorance of (the larger patriotism, the 
patriotism which stands for the interests of society as against 
the interests of the dominant political machinery, the new patriot- 
ism with its larger humanity and nobler ethical conceptions has 
scarcely been permitted to enter the hearts of the people. They, 
who would make international wars, invoke the grosser patriot- 
ism. It is as much a stock in trade for them as it is for the 
great combinations of vested privilege which would defraud the 
people of their natural heritages. Scoundrels in large under- 
takings have ever cried up patriotism. 

Race prejudice, nationalism, perverted history, ignorance 
of the social significance of warfare, and the teaching of relig- 
ious superstitions instead of ethical culture and moral educa- 
tion, have all served the development of the vast armaments 
which we now behold as the consummate flower of the com- 
petitive capitalistic system. 

This is a Christian war. It is waged by the great Christ- 
ian nations which for a thousand years have sent their emis- 
saries to other nations to teach them their conception of 
human brotherhood. The soldiers of the Czar go to the killing 
with the blessing of the Christian Church, and the assurance 
from the leaders of the church that the Christian God is with 
them in their brutalities. The Kaiser of Germany veritably 
believes that he and the Christian God are in intimate coopera- 
tion in this butchery, and the Christian Church of his realm sup- 
ports him in his contention. All of the warring nations are 
invoking the help of the Christian God to give them success 
in their onslaughts upon their fellowmen. And what of the 
non-combatant Christian countries? Are their churches rais- 
ing their voices to point out the fundamental itnmorality of 

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war, or doing a practical thing to prevent or stop it? No. 
These churches are utterly impotent to stay the slaughter. 
The most they venture to do is to pray inanely to their God 
to be merciful, and then smugly go about their business, 
leaving God to proceed with the slaughter. The Church is 
telling people that this is all because they have sinned, and 
that they should ask God's forgiveness. Sane people are reply- 
ing that if there is an almighty God he should be asking our 
forgiveness. 

Is the world to assume that this war is jealously watched 
over by God, and that ultimately He will bestow the crown of 
victory upon the army which has shed the most blood, strewn 
the earth with the most corpses, and despoiled the most 
homes? This is what Christendom asks us to believe. This is 
what will come to pass in the victorious nations : the Christ- 
ian Church, which interprets its God to the world, will proc- 
laim as the bloodstained victors come marching home from 
the slaughter that they have done God's holy work, and will 
fjroceed to thank Him for His cooperation. The Christian 
Church is so intimately a part and parcel of this war that it is 
obviously an affair of their God and theirs. They have been 
in it from the inception just as have the Krupps and the 
powder makers. All of whom are proceeding "their wonders 
to perfc;rm" in a way which is not mysterious to the discerning; 
but which to the dupes of Christendom is hallowed by a halo of 
of divine mystery. 

We have witnessed the spectacle of the President of a 
great republic issuing a proclamation to the people, setting 
aside a day upon which they are urged to use their influence 
with God to stop the war. All this in the language of 
benighted medievalism, and in the year 1914! We are invited 
to prostitute our intelligence as well as our humanity to the 
Moloch of war and superstition. 

We are taught with craven immorality to shirk the responsi- 
bility which is ours, to look into the sky for the cause of crimes 
of our own doing, and to appeal to an intangible being for help. 
In benighted cowardice we are urged to look for outside help, 
to implore an inconceivable creature to do for us the things we 
should be doing ourselves. Instead of rolling up our eyes we 
should be rolling up our sleeves and laying our hands to the 
task of righting the world's wrongs. So long as men look to 
an extranatural power to intercept and change the courses of 
events at their request to save them, just so long will they fail 
to secure salvation and will remain in the social slough. The 
guilt and the responsibility for this war belongs to mankind — 
all of us. To end it is our task. We need to have the sense 



of responsibility driven home to ns, and not driven away from us. 

Pra3ang to God is now practiced to a degree which is 
never seen in times of peace. The churches are busy, pretend- 
ing- to intercede between the suffering and the Omnipotence 
who it claims is in control of the situation. This is the har- 
vest time for the superstitions. Reason is cast aside, and 
bestiality and superstition are enthroned. 

Europe is now reaping the rewards of its unholy religious 
teachings. It has taught the people to worship a God who has 
gloried in bloodshed and slaughter. It has held up to the 
people as its most sacred document the literature which con- 
tains the recountals and the glorification of some of the most 
brutalizing and fiendish acts of warfare, massacre, and rapine 
that have stained the pages of history. It has compelled 
people not only to believe but to worship this document and 
ihis God. 

While the Christian Church has declared for the brother- 
hood of mankind, it has been a potent factor in defeating this 
brotherhood. It has not only developed antagonisms and hatreds 
against the peoples of the earth who do not accept its tenets, 
but those who do it has divided into petty warring cliques. 
Its "brotherhood of man" has meant little more than a brother- 
hood of sectarian believers. History shows the "brotherhood" 
it has bestowed upon Jews, Mahommedans, the inhabitants of 
ancient Mexico and Peru, the Indians of North America, the 
Africans, and every alien people whom it could exploit. Christ- 
endom has sent the Bible around the world, and followed it with 
sword, syphilis, and rum. Europe has many times during the 
past two thousand years dearly paid the penalty for its supersti- 
tions. Had the energy which has been expended in compelling 
people to concern themselves with what God is going to do to 
them after they are dead been employed in teaching and develop- 
ing the simple principles of decent social organization, Europe 
now might be a harmonious commonwealth of happy people 
instead of a vast field of human slaughter. The teaching that, 
'T come not to bring peace but a sword" has ever been a two 
edged gospel. 

It may be contended that the church is not guilty but has 
been only a passive agent, giving its approval to whatever 
chanced to be dominant. It has been and still remains the agent 
of the ruling class. But as it has flaunted itself and claimed a 
directing power it should accept responsibility. 

The money lenders, too, are enjoying their hey-day. The 
power of money — the invisible government behind it all — is 
reaping untold wealth and more power. This great coordinated 
international system could stop the war if it so desired. But 



there are profits to be reaped. The belligerent nations must 
be financed upon terms agreeable to the powers of money ; 
the stress in noncombatant nations must yield to the terms 
of the bankers : the enormous mass of securities held in the 
impoverished European countries is now ripe fruit ready to 
fall into the baskets of the money trust. Big finance is proceed- 
ing with cold-blooded deliberation to get the most possible out 
of the suffering of the bleeding nations. How to get the 
markets away from these people is now the supreme zeal of 
American business. 

If the authorities of this great republic were wiser it would 
not be to a deaf and impotent God that they would bid the 
people address their prayers, but it would be to the powers 
of money that they would advise us to prostrate ourselves in 
supplication. We are wise enough to know that while the 
money-power ever cries up patriotism,, money itself is never 
patriotic ; and so we witness the United States government 
cooperating with these very predatory interests to gather the 
harvest while it is ripe. 

While the Government has asked the people to pray to 
get the war stopped, it is at the same time helping big business 
to keep it going. We are sending grain and other food-stuffs 
to the belligerents, while the price of foods at home goes up 
and while unemployment and industrial distress weigh sorely 
upon the people. We are sending over powder, guns, and other 
munitions of war as fast as our factories can make them. All 
of this with the support of the Government which sancti- 
moniously prays to stop the war. Our national hypocrisy 
should fill us with shame. 

What good may come of this war? Is any benefit pos- 
sible which is to any degree commensurate with the harm ? 
There is none, unless these dupes and tools of kings and mi- 
nisters — this scarcely articulate mass of working men who 
represent the great bulk of the combatants — become conscious 
of the awful truth that they are being fooled ; that their lives 
are exploited in war as in peace; that the patriotism they have 
been taught is but petty provincialism ; that the race preju- 
dices that have been instilled into them from the cradle are 
groundless hatreds; that the very religions they have imbibed 
have aimed to make them superstitious and submissive slaves 
— submissive to autocratic authority; and that all of these 
agencies have been fostered by the powers that combine for 
war. These soldiers should know that they are exploited 
slaves — their minds and bodies in bondage to the powers of 
property as were the chattel slaves of old. 

The hope that the world has moved should give courage 



that out of the tuinuU and chaos uhimately shall come the voices 
to tell these things to the warring peoples. The powers of dark- 
ness may still these voices with dungeon and bullet, but they 
will be heard. And those who bear aloft the torch of light shall 
go down to their graves and to history, proclaimed saviors of 
men, — they who cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the 
mass of the people that they may see the truth that shall make 
them free. 

This is the hope: that these soldiers, who are spared, shall 
unite upon a common ground, hallowed by the blood of their 
fallen comrades ; that they shall unite — Teutons and Slavs — all 
men capable of useful service, and the women who remained at 
home — that they shall unite and declare themselves an industrial 
army of human brotherhood, consecrated to wage a holy war 
against the agencies of warfare, against autocracy, the privileges 
of classes, and the superstitions which they have fostered. 
Against this brotherhood of men may we hope the powers of 
vested interest shall not prevail. Upon the social wreckage which 
these powers have wrought may there grow the flower of a better 
society and a sweeter brotherhood of man. 

Out of this we may hope for more democracy,, and a society 
in which the working class shall come into its heritage. But 
the people of the warring nations must unite to secure these 
beneiits. There is danger that poverty may be the whip used to 
coerce them; that the "heroes'" of war may desire to keep alive 
the military spirit; that autocracy may prevail because the people 
are too poor and too weak to beat it off; and that the false cry 
of patriotism may be raised, calling upon the people to stand 
together and save their beloved country — for the autocracy. There 
is danger because militarism will be in the saddle, martial law 
will prevail, and the power will be in the hand that holds the 
sword. 

It is against these forces that social justice must contend. 
It is most probable that after the war internal revolution in the 
several nations will be necessary to secure for the people the only 
benefits which are possible. These revolutions are to be looked 
for as the true evidence that good at last may come out of the 
great sacrifice. It is to be hoped that these revolutions may be 
peaceful, and that the privileged classes will relinquish their 
war-causing privileges without a struggle ; but they must be 
relinquished. The demand of the people should be for more 
democracy, and still more democracy. 

All of the nations will be beaten nations at the end of the 
war, unless their people rise up and revolutionize them. This 
after all is to be the real war. The miserable slaughter now 
in progress is but an expression of capitalism just as are the 



mdustrial slaughter and the unnecessary mortality of peace. 
But the post bellum revolutions which await the war lords 
and ministers will be the expressions of a warfare having" 
a real basis and a real significance. These should be wars in which 
brothers are not pitted against brothers. There should be no 
class anachronisms here. On one side should be ranged vested 
interests, autocracy, militarism, the Church, and the privileged 
classes who live by the exploitation of labor, and on the other 
side should be ranged the men and women who desire to perform 
service for their daily bread, and to be allowed to live in 
peace with their neighbors. The lines of distinction are easily 
drawn: those who usurp the wealth on one side and those who 
create it on the other; those who stand for industrial slavery 
and the robbery of the socially useful on the one side, and those 
who have caught the vision of social justice and would introduce 
it into a better society on the other. 

It is to this warfare which was before the Great War and 
which will be after it, that we must look for the redemption of 
the vanquished peoples. Warfare is unethical and brutalizing, 
but it exists, and it will remain unethical and brutalizing until 
social justice abolishes it. In the belligerent nations, the weak- 
ness, brutality, and unreasonableness of the capitalistic system 
should be driven home so trenchantly to the people that they 
shall rise up in their sorrow and resolve to destroy the cause 
of their suffering. 

But the redemption of the belligerent nations alone will 
not abolish war. The causes still exist in other nations. The 
world will probably never again see religious wars as of old : 
science is rapidly abolishing the superstitions, and people no 
longer take their religions so seriously. But the economic causes 
of war persist. Wars will continue so long as international 
commercial interests clash. A European federation of states 
must come; but such a federation will clash with the interests 
of an American or Asiatic federation. World peace is assured 
only by the abolition of capitalism and the development of a 
federation embracing all the countries of the world. 

This is a slow program. Something can be done to hasten 
it. The formation of an international world congress, with 
delegates sent by the people of every country, should be at once 
set on foot. Such a congress should be a legislative body. It 
should make the international laws governing sea traffic, inter- 
national shipping and import duties, imperialism, quarantine, 
and armaments. No nation should be allowed to have an army 
or navy any more than a citizen now is. Disputes should be 
adjudicated only in court. The Hague should be developed into 
an international supreme court, before which all disputes should 



be brought. \{ any army or navy is maintained there should be 
but one, and that jointly by all the nations. 

The educational movement to bring about this result should 
at once be set in motion. 

In the meantime the Great War goes on. The world is 
closely knit, compared with what it once was. There are no 
disinterested nations. All are within the war zone. All must 
suffer. It is as a plague. The non-combatant nations should 
not wait until invited. They should at once begin organization 
to intervene. The non-combatants have rights which the com- 
batants must respect. The warring nations are inflicting untold 
harm upon us. If they may influence us, we may influence 
them. This war is a world pestilence, and it is our duty to 
plan to stop it. It is closer to us than was the war in Cuba in 
1898. The duty of the people of this country is to take the 
initiative in the pacific movement. This should not be by a 
polite but impractical offer of our "good offices." We should 
start the movement for the world congress. It is conceivable 
that such a congress could be organized, could legislate against 
the war, and hale the combatants before an international court 
before the war is over. 

These are the lines in which the United States might act 
instead of promoting the petty business in which it has thus 
far engaged. The moral value of such a movement would be 
incalculably great. 

Whatever we do it behooves us to cry out against war, to 
educate our children away from it, to discontinue its glorifica- 
tion, and to cast out of our schools the perverted histories which 
exalt it. It is the monstrous crime of the nations; it is the 
consummate product of the great social sins. 



DEC 4 ,9,4 
LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 




